Crown of One Hundred Kings (Nine Kingdoms Trilogy #1) - Rachel Higginson Page 0,25

I couldn’t help it. I had to know. “It truly keeps people out?” He nodded once. “It’s pagan. Dark magic.”

He shook his head, seemingly disappointed with my conclusion. “It’s the magic of the forest. I would hardly call trees and bushes, leaves and branches pagan.”

My mother’s voice drifted through the haze of my memory. “Or maybe,” I countered. “They are the very definition of pagan.”

“Arrick!” Someone called from across what could only be described as a courtyard. “You’re needed in the gunnery.”

“There’s a gunnery amid your treehouses? That doesn’t seem wise.”

“It’s safe,” he insisted.

“Of course it is.”

His gaze cut to me twice and I enjoyed the frown my words put on his face. “It is safe.”

“I believe you.”

He snorted. “I don’t need you to believe me. I can take care of my own people.”

“So you are the leader of the rebels? The great Arrick whom no one has heard of?”

“That’s not saying much from a female who knows nothing of Tenovian customs yet hopes to somehow cross the country by walking backwards through its impossible forest.”

“How did you…” I narrowed my eyes at him again and reassessed the cloak wrapped around his shoulders and covering his face. My finger lifted. “You! You’re the reason we got lost in the first place! We thought you were a constable!”

“Me?”

“If you hadn’t chased us out of that inn, we would have stayed on the main road and never wandered into the Blood Woods to begin with!”

His hand lifted in helplessness. “I didn’t chase you out of that inn! I asked you a question and you ran away! How was I supposed to know you would head straight for the forest and never come out?”

“Ack!”

His voice dropped when he realized most of his men stood around us, listening intently to our bickering. I expected him to push the argument, but when he spoke it wasn’t to me. “Take our guests to the commons. Give them food. Let them get warm. Find them clean clothes.”

I looked down at my mud-soaked, leaf-strewn dress. What a mess I must look like! Still, I said, “We do not need your charity, Rebel. We are quite capable of taking care of our own needs.”

He ignored me, turning fully to the man he was speaking to. “And do not let them out of your sight. Not even for a second.”

His man nodded and lifted his sword in the direction he intended for us to go. I bit back a hundred ugly retorts, deciding that this was not the battle I should pick. Besides, for all my bravado, my stomach ached with hunger and my cold feet longed for a fire.

I decided I would allow him to treat me kindly for a while. But we would figure out a way to escape, just as soon as we’d eaten our fill and changed clothes.

Also, possibly taken a bath.

8

“Who knew?”

I lifted my heavy eyelids to meet Oliver’s sleepy gaze from across the fire. Shiksa slept in my lap, curled into a tiny ball. Her lungs heaved with blissful sleep after a dinner of fresh milk and half a biscuit. “Who knew what?”

He rested his elbows on his boney knees. “That the life of a rebel wasn’t so bad.”

I rolled my eyes. “They’re clearly vagrants. They take what they want when they want it. They have no respect for other people. They live in this hellish place surrounded by pagan magic. Oliver, they stand against every single thing that we’re working for. How can you even say those words?”

He leaned back in his comfortable chair and smiled lazily into the warm fire that finally heated my frigid toes. “They don’t seem that bad.”

“You’ve been bewitched.”

He tucked his hands behind his head and lifted his gaze to the ceiling. “By a hearty meal and warm shelter.”

“You’re supposed to be a man of principle!”

His smile grew, stretching across his narrow face.

I threw the pillow tucked behind my back at him. Then, disgusted with myself, I set Shiksa on the comfortable chaise I’d been curled up on and jumped to my feet. If Oliver was going to turn traitor, I was going to need to pace.

And then stab something.

Nightfall had come like a candle being snuffed out. It had been daylight and warm sun, then all at once, with one mighty breath from the sky above, it was night.

Young boys, pages of some kind, rushed in to fuel the fire and light lanterns all around the room. Unlike last night, we didn’t cower, huddling together against the